The seventh week of Mythic+ this season is over, and Nightstalker314 is reviewing the weekly data from Raider.IO. With no extra incentives or competition from other 5-man content, M+ metrics declined by 11.60%. This is an expected value for mid-season weeks. But as we have observed over the last few weeks, the usual key levels for vault farming are seeing less and less activity. Meanwhile, high-end keys are still progressing ahead of the previous season. But players might reach the ceiling sooner than expected. And the new Keystone Myth cut-off might have been too ambitious. But let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons
The global decline of 11.60% was again split into a stronger decline in the West than in the East. EU (-14.26%) and US (-13.65%) were below the average, and TW (-12.55%), KR (-9.70%), and CN (-9,10%) were above. It’ll also be interesting to see if Forever will generate as much interest in Asia. The full release will definitely have a major impact on retail metrics.
But so far, Classic Anniversary lost the most. According to Ironforge.pro, the number of characters logged by WarcraftLogs for EU and US has dropped from 241,439 in the week before BlizzCon down to 86,503 in the last reset. A decline of 64.17% in just 4 weeks. For the US, this value stands at 69.85%; for the EU at 57.31%. Vanilla/Classic WoW seems a lot more popular in the US.
M+ numbers on retail were not on such a steep decline, -42.30% in the last 4 weeks. As we saw two weeks ago, the raiding population is quite healthy and boosted by the disparity in loot quality. MN S2 absolute numbers are still the lowest among the most recent seasons. But the graph has been following the trajectory of MN S1 for a while. Up until the crest cap removal in week 10, M+ might still be less relevant than just filling your vault with a heroic raid clear.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The spread across all dungeons slightly shrank last week. The difference in participation reduced by 0.30 percentage points to 4.72 from first to last. Their order did not change at all. Blinding Vale might remain in last place for the rest of the season. The devs have announced further tuning for 12.1.5. So far, dataming revealed major nerfs for Ruby Life Pools. And some more nerfs would also help to close the gap between the top and bottom half of the roster.
Murder Row (94.09%) remained almost unchanged in its top spot. Kings’ Rest (92.84%), Temple (92.05%), and Voidscar Arena (91.83%) dropped by a significant margin. Den of Nalorakk (90.35%) and the Blinding Vale (89.87%) also barely shifted. Meanwhile, Altar (89.50%) and Ruby Life Pools (89.16%) widened the gap towards the top. Murder Row might drop a bit when the undertuned second boss is fixed. But the difference of 4.93 percentage points from top to bottom is a bit too wide.
Split Across All Key Levels
85.89% of all keys finished at key level 10 and higher. That is a slight improvement from last week, but by now MN S2 is behind MN S1 (88.13%) on this metric. As discussed in previous breakdowns, the interest in +10 keys has dropped off a lot. MN S1 in week 7 had a 32.91% share for +10s; in MN S2, we were at 24.57%. The relative share dropped by 25.33% compared to last season; the absolute number of +10s dropped by 50.89%. And especially in terms of relative share, +10s stand out. Compared to last week and week 7 in MN S1, most key levels up to +12 did not drop as much in terms of absolute numbers. And their relative share mostly increased compared to MN S1. So, in conclusion, there is a deliberate decision by players not to farm +10s as much as they used to.
The overall success rate decreased slightly by 0.17 percentage points to 91.31%. With such a minor decrease, we can’t point to one deciding factor. Across all key levels, there is no clear decline for a specific key range. The deviation remained between -0.87 and +0.79 points between key levels 2 and 20. From 16 to 19, it might be tied to increased efforts for rating gains, hindered by a lack of gear progression without high-end loot from the two final mythic encounters.
Is the Keystone Myth Cut-off Too High This Season?
Another problem that seems to crystallize lately is the planned cut-off for Keystone Myth. Last season, players could unlock a new or older mount at 3,400 rating. A decent choice that filled the gap towards the top 1%. But with the planned 3,600 cut-off this season, they might miss the mark. 200 extra rating translates to 1.66 more key levels on average. By now, the best runs in this season so far have been completed by teams that are decked out in almost 100% BIS items. And the upcoming item upgrades mean nothing to them. Same goes for the solo raid boss loot.
Maybe with optimization over time, the +25 ceiling and a similar top rating as in MN S1 can be reached again. But last season, a 3,600 rating was already above the top 5% for most regions. Increased interest in the 5% reward might lead to an increased rating cut-off here. But the difference towards 3,600 might not be as big for most specs. It’s even possible that reaching the top 5% for underperforming specs might not be enough for Keystone Myth. Last season, depending on the region, a 3,400 rating was reached by 10.20% (US) to 18.60% (TW) of all characters. 3.10% (US) to 5.70% (TW) reached a 3,640 rating, all +18s.
Conclusion and Week 8 Forecast
The developers have yet to solve one major problem in terms of player motivation this season: The vault. Heroic and mythic raiding are more rewarding by default. Their internal expectations for the end-of-season rating curve might also be tainted by mythic raiders that basically finished gearing weeks before everybody else. Maybe the nerfs to the lower end of dungeon tuning will help, but this season isn’t going well for core M+ players.
As of this writing, 120 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions are quite behind again. It is a Timewalking week, but without a raid reward. So far, US servers are behind by 18.35%, EU servers by 17.15%, and CN servers by 12.75%. We will examine this further in the next breakdown.